Virtual Vacation

For today's vacation we thank location sound mixer Hayden Jackson, who writes, 'This is a recording I made in the summer of 2005, when I worked on a music video in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The last day of the shoot was on top of La Tigra National Park, which looks over the entire city. Two park employees armed with machetes were detailed to watch over us for our protection. I set up my gear (a Sony ECM-MS957 mic going directly into my Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder) to record this track unattended (hey, I was busy working!)/. As we were quite a distance from the city, I'm amazed at how well my mic picked up some of the voices below, particularly the children. That was a memorable night: as night began to fall, the park employees took off and we were left alone. While we were packing up our equipment in the dark, two police officers approached us and demanded that we drive them back down the mountain. As we got into the van, our interpreter informed us that some of the police were corrupt and we had best watch our backs, so I was a bit uneasy when the head officer rode up front with me, his gun out in his lap mere inches from me. The drive down the mountain seemed to take forever! But thankfully, the officers didn't try anything funny...'